Nervous Cat's Tale

    As the animal regulation department's files prove, life in our vast jungle compound is fraught with peril.  It is not uncommon for people to be frightened, by roving pythons or straying wildebeests and to be bitten by ocelots,coati mundis or owls.

    One night recently around 7, Jeanne Weston, who lives on Mulholland Dr., received a call from a neighbor who said excitedly that Jeanne's Siamese cat Farkleberry was having a fight with a wildcat.

    Armed with a broom and a flashlight that didn't work, Jeanne joined the neighbors on their front yard.  They were shining lights on the growling wildcat which had retreated under a bush. Farkleberry had retreated home.

    Apparently the wildcat had been stirred out of its habitat by another Cat — Caterpillar tractor, that is — which has been noisily carving a path through the nearby wild section.

    Everything is normal again except Farkleberry.  He's as nervous as a human.

    "Then take these," the motorist said, "and have your girlfriend cook you a dinner."  He handed the amazed attendant a two-pound chuck roast, two pounds of spare ribs, a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs.

    "I can't use them, my wife just threw me out of the house," he explained, and drove off.

    ESCAPE ARTIST
At 10, when the library
    opens,
Begins, for him, the magic
    hour;
In his coat, the tawny port;
In his hand, "Knighthood in
    Flower."
            MILTON J. FRANK

    A FELLOW NAMED Art Ryon who works down the hall a piece deplores this corner's lack of faith in the tale of the revengeful cement truck driver.  The way it's told, he dumps a load of freshly mixed cement into his wife's boyfriend's car.

    All I know is that it bears the unmistakable mark of the phony story.  Try to pin it down to who, when and where, and it is always told by someone who heard it from his brother-in-law in San Gabriel, who heard it from a neighbor who heard it from a fellow whose name he forgets.

    By the way, the story has not only allegedly happened in San Fernando Valley, Fontana, Ontario and San Diego, but a man just back from Miami, Fla., says he heard it there.

    EVERYONE IS saying nice things about Paul Anka, 18, who composes songs and sings them, mostly for the rock and roll tribe.  However, a young lady named Jane, who advises me in teenage matters, says even his disciples are snickering at  a  sequence in his current recording.  Apparently overcome by puppy love and self pity, he whimpers despairingly, "Help me! Help me! Help me!"  Why?

    UNTIL IT WAS corrected in a later edition, a rather nice typo sparkled in print a few days ago in a story about shopping at the supermarket.  It stated, "Lettuce is flooding in and romance is in a slump."

    Obviously waiting for spring to spring.

    AT RANDOM — Big Brother, in this case presumably a fellow named Summerfield, is watching.  Postage stamp cancellation in San Francisco has the imprint, "Report Obscene Mail to Your Postmaster" . . . KPFK, the nonprofit FM station, claims it is presenting the highest class soap opera in town — the BBC serialization of "Anna Karenina"  . . . Disneyland's new flower market describes its wares as "the world's finest natural flowers that are not grown by nature."  Yep, artificial, but what an illusion . . . With the Chessman case still reverberating, John Reese's Post short story, "Prison Secret," has particular timeliness.  Reese, former L.A. newspaperman who made the grade to magazine fiction, lives in Temple City.